


Home Is Being Away From Home

by Infolane_ZARC



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 15:18:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17062214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Infolane_ZARC/pseuds/Infolane_ZARC
Summary: Mr Veils goes North.





	Home Is Being Away From Home

There used to be a smell that was home. High and sharp and wood-metal. It's been lost since that day, surely, along with all other things of that place. The snow that was a blue tint and flammable. The winds, colder and harsher. The skies, a gentle red with a dim sun. 

 

And yet, it wasn't unlike the northern place here, right? 

 

_Mr Veils twirls a pen between its long, slender fingers. The darkness of its room is a strange brand of comforting_.

 

Forests of black-red leaves, where creatures unlike anything on Earth roamed. The thrill of the hunt. The pride on showcasing prey and selling it. The long shadows cast at sunset as the first of your kind woke up, stretched themselves and roamed the pebble paved streets towards the markets and warehouses.

 

_God, can taxes be any more boring? The ink that makes the little english words swirls and dances. The words are like a bunch of rowdy birds._

 

The skies of that place didn't have birds, but the manta-like behemoths and pneumatic-wing beasts provided sparks of iridiscence here and there. Slow, morose shapes in the sky, like clouds. 

 

You used to dream of hunting them. As a pup, you'd jump and snarl and chase. You wanted the sky because it was out of reach, much like you wanted anything which was locked from you or put in a high place. The same triumphant glee of getting into the jar of golden, sticky jam would take you if you were to run on the back of a sky creature and take it down by the neck. 

 

 

“What? Going north? Why? There's nothing for you there-”

 

What did the one that told you that look like?

What did you look like?

 

The merchants of then, with their wares and tales of strange prey in the greatest hunting field of all, caught your attention. When they settled for the month in your village, everyone was suspicious. Outsiders of another species. They surely deserved to be hunted down and chased away.

 

You never did manage to hunt one down yourself- and you don't think anyone else did either, even if claims to the contrary abounded. The merchants were too fast. Too strong. Knew painful fire-words. They had wings and tricks you didn't. They were out of reach and you wanted them as well, and that is why you had to talk to them. You picked one, bought from them, helped them and toiled, yes, until you had the right to a private audience.

 

You didn't even let them speak before piping up, louder than intended, fervent and determined:

 

“Teach me to hunt like you! Teach me to kill one of you!! I'll pay!!”

 

You'd, then, expected the tall, hooded figure, to start to talk and drive you mad with details and business nonsense and hiking prices for this and that. You'd gotten used to their strange ways, but it didn't mean you liked them. Still, you were ready to tolerate it for the sake of being a hunter better than anyone else. But- no. No. Instead, those unsettling teal eyes locked onto yours. It bent down, to see you up close, unreadable and scrutinizing. And there, that high pitched voice, said that which changed all.

 

“Why don't you try going north?”

 

_...Veils puts aside the half finished work. The words have stopped making sense now. It's time to focus in something else. It strides to the window. The cloak is dropped. There's a list of victims, ready for the slaughter, see, but it doesn't need that. Every hunter after it is another delightful fan and another idiot falling for its tricks. A jump and its wings take it up, vast and star-speckled._

 

See. Everyone knew these guys had come from north. From where the ice and fire-storms made life all but impossible. From a gate left there by the stars and their couriers. It was madness, surely, to try to get there. What was one to gain that they couldn't get in the lush forests, anyway?

 

As far as you were aware, they just didn't understand.

 

Up, among the stars, is a place unbound by the limitations of land. A place where you can be whatever you want to be. Where it only takes some cleverness to dodge laws. Freedom. Absolute and uncontested. Freedom to trade and hunt and live. How could you not make your escape into a place like that? And were there an even freer sphere above, you'd certainly escape the High Wilderness into that.

 

When you made yourself cloth of heavy fur and stocked up on food, your friends told you to stop that. That you'd certainly had gone mad with the tall tales of weird prey. That you couldn't possibly trust something so flimsy. That they were certainly going to hunt you down when you were weak and hungry there.

 

But fact was- they didn't need that sort of dirty trick. They were smarter and stronger and faster and if they wanted to eat you, they could do it now and get it over with. There was no way that was a lie. And maybe you were naive, but you were brave as well. And if a hunter isn't brave, what is it?

 

“Vake”, scribbled on paper with coal pen. A doodle of a fearsome creature as you imagined the hunters from space to be like. All claws. All bristles. All spines. Wings puffy and furry, folded like origami. Teal eyes so fierce they'd cut through you.

 

_Nowadays, Vake-hunters are your prey. A fantasy come true. You fly high and are almost imperceptible against the movements of the false stars. You know where you prey gather and know there they look for you. Those faces full of determination, swiping up and trying to bring you down. They want you because you are unnattainable. The same triumphant glee of getting into cookie jar would take them if they were to shoot you and down you with a bullet to the head._

 

The scale-people of the shore sold you a boat and had those willing to be your crew. You saw the world, you know? Saw much more than any of the others in that village. Roughly following the nomad merchants, you saw the glass-sands of the equator and the mountains forever on fire. The pink lakes and the manta roosts. The leviathans and fields of armor-mice. Sights wondrous and monotonous alike, but all new and all fun. The world, your playground. 

 

You saw your first fire-storm when lightning struck the northernmost snow. The maddening colors the air took as more and more lightning was drawn onto the wall of absurd hues. And the gate. The gate, charred and blackened and guarded by sharp things from nowhere. 

 

And they knocked. A tapping you remember even now, when its become damned and dangerous. A tapping to tell the guardians: Open up and let us through.

 

The lights could have blinded you if the scale-people didn't drag you to the botton of the ship.

 

_Mr Veils perches somewhere high. The lights of london flicker. There is no morning and no night here, but still it wakes up the same time every... well. Not day. What would have been a day, then. Wakes up the same time and chases the creatures of its quarters. Does its work and fills up whatever paperwork will expedite the end of this prison. And even though its been millenia, sometimes it still finds something new to see. More new things than most of the humans around it ever find wondrous in their lifetime. If it didn't, perhaps the bore would kill it._

 

The ship could almost reach the Gate when the fires died down, so much of the snow had melted. One of the crew, wrapped tightly in furs, hugged you. Told you they wished you luck. That they were sure you were meant for this kind of thing. You'd bragged that surely, yes. You were the best hunter, after all.

 

A hissing noise, like a chuckle.

 

“I meant exploring, you know. I don't think anyone can hold you to one place for long. Not you.”

 

You never looked back, see. Just took your things, cursed the snow when it made your socks wet and walked up to the gate.

 

_It spots another victim- and swoops down. It sings of absurd wonders on its way down, wonders no one else will sing of in the part of the universe._

 

Seven rhytmic series of seven knocks. There was light, then, as deep as the darkness of today.

 


End file.
